Is that enough of a drop for you? It certainly will be a huge hit for the energy stocks I'm in Scott

Nope. It was down when I shorted the market. I need the S&P 500 to go down another 200 to 300 points. Then I might get happy.

On the bright side, once it goes down, it eventually bottoms out and goes back up. I tried to explain this to my sister who retired recently. She seen her IRA get cut in half last year. On the very day it bottomed out, she panic-ed and bought an annuity that she's stuck with for 10 years. If she had just stuck it out, all of her money, and then some, would have recovered.

My 401k, when I see things like this comming, I put it all into a guaranteed fund that doesn't lose money. Then when it starts to look rosy again, I move it all back into high-risk mutual funds.

The problem with the markets now, is that they are losing the "real" investors. They say 70% of the markets are controlled by high freq traders who buy and sell in milliseconds not knowing or caring what stocks they buy and sell....they have no interest in investing in companies who are listed on the Indices to raise capital for their operations. This is what the markets were created for, but I think at some point there will only be traders and speculators left and no investors. If it were up to me, I'd open a new stock market where people have to call in and bid, like old times...no programs to buy and sell millions of stocks a day, only real investors who want some reasonable return by loaning their money to whatever company they choose.

::: get's down from soapbox :::

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Half of communication is listening. You can't listen with your mouth.

There is a site called sharebuilder.com that "used" to only allow you to buy or sell shares in a stock only once a week, for $4 a trade. I see that it now has grown from that to allowing daily real-time trading.

It was something I would never be interested in because if you happen to snag a real loser, (or a good company that just ran out of favor, due to government policy change, etc), you'd likely loose all of your investment before you could get out of it.

That's not good either, but the guys who buy and sell the same stock within milliseconds are one of the main reasons you are seeing huge swings in the markets which cause real investors to leave the market. Then they have the gall to tell you "it's good for the markets"....translation...."it's good for my self serving purpose".

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Half of communication is listening. You can't listen with your mouth.

I believe that you are correct. The goal for the individual trader is to recognize this and profit from it. As always, reverse what a beginning trader would do (I know what that is, lol) and trade just the opposite.

I read a trading book a few years ago that was a compilation of bios of other traders. The one that remains with me to this day said "What I do is just wait for money to lay around an go pick it up." By this, he means don't try to force a trade. Don't trade and hope. Wait until you see an opportunity arise and jump on it. Of course, in order to see an opportunity, you have to study and become observant. There are stocks that double and triple in value very day/week/year. You just have to be able to recognize the opportunities. For the market, in general, buy when everyone is selling, not when it has already gone up and looks like a good buy, because it probably isn't.

I got lucky yesterday when I bought OREX stock for my sister's account. It's a pharmaceutical company that's trying to make a diet pill. One other company VVUS (V V U S), has a diet pill due to be approved/disapproved tomorrow (Thursday 07/15/10) and it's causing all of the other pharmaceutical companies with diet pills to quickly increase in value.